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Five Years After Netflix’s ‘Sex, Love & Goop,’ Darshana Avila Announces ‘It’s My Pleasure’ Women’s Retreat
The sexological bodyworker featured on the series says the conversation about women's sexual health has opened up since 2021, even as social media keeps shutting it down.
Oakland, CA, Oct. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Erotic Wholeness alongside founder Darshana Avila, a featured practitioner on Netflix’s “Sex, Love & Goop,” today announced “It’s My Pleasure,” a four-day women’s retreat taking place February 11–14, 2027, in Oakland, California. The announcement coincides with the fifth anniversary of the series, which brought Avila’s approach to somatic sex and intimacy work to a global audience.
Darshana Avila, sexological bodyworker and founder of Erotic Wholeness, a somatic sex and intimacy practice in Oakland, CA.
Camille froze.
She and her partner, Shandra, were in their bras and underwear as sexological bodyworker Darshana Avila guided them through different positions and possibilities to enhance their sexual dynamic on Netflix's "Sex, Love & Goop." Avila stopped and offered Camille something simple. She could put her clothes back on.
Camille got dressed. Then she cried in Avila's arms.
"That permission to de-escalate during intimacy was a paradigm shift for her," said Avila, founder of Erotic Wholeness, a somatic sex and intimacy practice in Oakland. "After so many years of performative sexual activity, she'd never felt like she had it, even with a loving, kind, available partner."
The scene aired five years ago this week, when the series premiered on Oct. 21, 2021. Since then, Avila says, women have started talking about pleasure in ways she rarely heard when she opened her practice 12 years ago. Where they're allowed to talk about it is another story.
What changed
What can a woman say out loud now that she couldn't in 2021? Menopause. Perimenopause. Orgasm. How she likes to have sex. And the idea that she might spend time and money on her sexual well-being, "not just from a problem-to-be-fixed, medicalized standpoint, but because her pleasure matters."
"Pleasure is not a luxury. It's a necessity," she said. "A woman who's connected to her pleasure is a woman who's connected to her power."
The midlife conversation, she says, still carries one stubborn myth: "that your libido just up and walks out of the room, never to be seen again." What often leaves is the habit of going along with sex that never worked. The question she asks clients is simpler. "What is sex worth having for you?" Most of the women she works with, she says, have never been asked.
What hasn't
"She can't say half of the words that are anatomically correct, never mind colloquial, on most public platforms," Avila said.
In 2023, Instagram removed her account, which had grown to nearly 8,000 followers without a dollar of paid promotion. Over the next month, she said, its automated system restored the account about a dozen times, told her she hadn't broken its rules and took it down again within hours. She walked away.
"I decided that my sanity was more important than my social media platform," she said.
In 2022, the nonprofit Center for Intimacy Justice found Meta had rejected ads from 60 companies focused on women's and gender-diverse health, Forbes reported, while ads for erectile dysfunction treatments and condoms ran. Rejections continued after Meta loosened its policy, the group told the Federal Trade Commission in 2023.
"So many of the women's health entrepreneurs and nonprofits we work with are still facing the exact same barriers," the group's founder, Jackie Rotman, told Forbes.
Women pay for that silence, Avila says, in basics they never learn about their own bodies. Every client goes through a lesson on the anatomy of arousal, taught with a 3D model and medically accurate slides.
"I've yet to have a single client not learn something game-changing in that lesson," she said.
A field few have heard of
Avila describes her field this way: "We work at the therapeutic-erotic intersection and really support our clients in establishing body sovereignty."
Her sessions follow the Wheel of Consent, a framework created by Dr. Betty Martin that Avila calls a gold standard in somatic sexology. Clients can pause or say no at any point. "Sessions are not the Darshana show," she said.
Many of her clients come to her after they've plateaued in talk therapy, "really clear that they need something more embodied and experiential," she said.
"Over the past few years, I've seen clients arrive far more ready to name pleasure as something they deserve," said Kerry McKee, LCSW, a Bay Area integrative psychotherapist. "But shame and trauma live in the body, and hands-on work with a skilled, trauma-informed practitioner can reach places therapy alone can't."
"Addressing sex without a trauma-informed lens is limiting and potentially harmful," Avila said.
What couples get wrong
The belief Avila sees creating a struggle for so many couples is that love should be enough, and that they can have a great sex life without ever talking about it.
Men want more, too. Max, a Seattle client married more than 30 years, told her sex with his wife is where he finally gets to drop the performance and feel soft.
"Pleasure is political," Avila said. "Each person has a right to their own self-determination."
Five years from now, she hopes every word for the female body, scientific or colloquial, "can be proudly typed and spoken everywhere and anywhere."
Avila will host It's My Pleasure, a four-day women's retreat, Feb. 11-14, 2027, in Oakland, California.
About Erotic Wholeness
Erotic Wholeness, a practice of DA Coaching, offers trauma-informed, culturally sensitive and pleasure-centered somatic sex, intimacy and relationship guidance for women and couples in Oakland, California, and beyond. Founder Darshana Avila is a Certified Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, NeuroAffective Touch Practitioner and Certified Somatica Sex and Relationship Coach with 12 years in private practice. She has worked with hundreds of clients, including some who traveled from Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Canada, England and France, and has led workshops and retreats in the United States, India, Bali and Thailand. Avila appeared on Netflix's "Sex, Love & Goop," has been a guest on nearly 50 podcasts and hosts the "Deeper With Darshana" podcast. She writes on Substack and is accepting new private clients and speaking engagements for 2027. Learn more at darshanaavila.com.
Darshana Avila, founder of Erotic Wholeness and host of the “Deeper With Darshana” podcast.
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